When we fall asleep some people noted a sudden jerk and twitching of muscles. Actually when you go from awakens into sleep than in brain many change or release of different hormone occur for controlling the situation and to keep you in sleep.
Brain hormone control consciousness and the second one is about monkeys falling off of trees. Here we go! So while falling asleep there is a highly choreographed interaction between different parts of your brain regulating alertness and wakefulness and also sleep and unconsciousness.
The first part is in the brainstem in the center in the old part of your brain but pretty much at the base of it and those are responsible for wakefulness and alertness with the neurotransmitters they send out through the brain. And the other part is the core, a nucleus we call it, in the hypothalamus that is responsible for inhibiting that brainstem and shutting it down, quieting it down.
And this core in the hypothalamus is very closely linked and related to a different part that's responsible for your day and night cycle for your sleep rhythm. Like a flip-flop switched it says from alertness now we're moving into a sleep state. You notice when you fall asleep for instance how your thoughts become more loose more fluid, illogical, and more creative more different things are being connected don't make sense when you're
awake.
That happens because those parts of the brain that is responsible for logical thinking they're slowly being shut down. Within that transition period that's when those muscle jerks can usually happen it's like sleep stage one or two like light sleep, at the beginning of the night while falling asleep. And within that handing over some muscle activity can still go through and activate and your muscles are twitching that's one of the reasons.
The hypnic jerk is not a condition it's very common in the population and about 60 to70 percent of people say they have it more frequently so why does it then sometimes feel like you're falling or you're tripping when you wake from the startle, the sleep startle, or the hypnic jerk why is that happening? That's where the monkeys come in.
So picture this you're a small monkey somewhere in Africa and the sun is setting it's getting dark the stars are coming out and you need to find a place to sleep that's safe. Safe from all the predators all the cats all the felines are out to get you at night where do you go to sleep what is safe? Up in the trees would be a good bet and that's what most monkeys actually do. But here's the issue gladly you don't move during your sleep too much especially in REM sleep and muscles are actually being inhibited.
So you're not acting out your dreams there's actually a condition where people can't inhibit the muscles during REM sleep and they act out their dreams and injure themselves during the night. It's quite serious actually.
So we're happy and as a little monkey in Africa you should be happy that your muscles are not moving during your dreaming, upon the branch but back to the monkeys. So for the monkey and for our ancestors, it made sense for muscles not to move during the night also while you're sleeping on the ground.
But this also means you can't grasp the branches you have nothing to hold on to actually protect you once you actually would slip off. So one of the ideas is one of the hypotheses says evolutionarily that's why we have the hypnic jerk it's a misinterpretation of the brain assuming too quickly that we'll fall off or slip off the branch when muscles are being inhibited.
So it startles us awake with a feeling of falling for us to still have time to grab on to the branches before we hit the ground.
And that makes sense but I have to be honest there's I couldn't find any evidence for this they're just papers and books talking about it calling it a very common theory, so it's a nice story and it's a good way to think about how evolution shapes our behavior. So maybe next time you're falling asleep and you jerk awake and you lie in your bed you can remember your monkey ancestors millions of years ago somewhere up in a tree in Africa slipping and falling off their branch.
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